Ruby Red: Tales from the Weedwater

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BfK No. 111 - July 1998

Cover StoryThis issue’s cover is from The Hutchinson Treasury of Children’s Poetry (cover illustration by Peter Weevers). Edited by Alison Sage (who also edited The Hutchinson Treasury of Children’s Literature), this sumptuous anthology is loosely divided into four sections corresponding to age starting with nursery rhymes and first poems through to poems for older children and classic poetry. Poems from such modern poets as Roger McGough, Ted Hughes, Wendy Cope and Maya Angelou sit alongside poems by Longfellow, Robert Louis Stevenson, Shelley and Shakespeare. The anthology is illustrated in full colour and black and white. Newly commissioned illustrations from, for example, Quentin Blake, Shirley Hughes and Nicola Bayley are included alongside illustrations by Randolph Caldecott, Jessie Willcox Smith and Kate Greenaway. With such a comprehensive range of poems for 2-11 year olds and upwards, this is a wonderful family book.

Ruby Red: Tales from the Weedwater

A collection of five fairy tales from Branford, whose Fire, Bed and Bone has recently won the Guardian Children's Fiction prize. Ruby Red is a very traditional looking fairy - John Lupton's pencil and charcoal sketches depict an elfin figure wandering dreamily amidst the fey fauna and flora usually associated with the secret folk. The stories also have a slightly old fashioned feel to them - Ruby heals a family rift, rescues a stranded pirate on weedwater stream, gives a new home and life to an abandoned mechanical horse - but there is an undertow of gentle humour and irony here that makes these tales read beautifully freshly. Branford succeeds in creating a miniature world and society in which many children will find a secure and fascinating place to read.